


turn me on with your electric feel

by orphan_account



Category: South Park
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-30
Updated: 2016-12-30
Packaged: 2018-09-13 09:57:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9118624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Craig likes to think of his life in cinematic terms; all the world’s a stage and everyone around him has a part to play. If he had his way, Kenny and his stupid friends would be reduced to nothing more than background characters, extras to fill the set that is their high school.Unfortunately for him, real life is so rarely like the movies.





	

Craig figures out that his junior year of high school is off to an ominous start the moment Mr. Mackey ushers him into the AV Room to meet with the audiovisual club’s new vice president, and Craig finds none other than Kenny fucking McCormick waiting for him there, smiling like a smug asshole. 

This is all shades of totally unfair, seeing as Craig never asked to be in charge of this stupid club in the first place. But when Mr. Mackey called at the tail end of the summer, rambling about how Alex, the incoming senior who was supposed to take the position, suffered some kind of mental breakdown over the course of the break and how Craig was basically the only one qualified enough for the job, Craig’s mom was so damn thrilled at the prospect of her son actually being involved in school in some way that Craig could do nothing more than stoically accept his offer. 

Then he called Clyde and Tweek, and the three of them went over to Token’s house, broke into his dad’s stash, and got very, very drunk. 

The resulting hangover and his inability to even look at a bottle of gin for the next month and a half were well worth it at the time, but standing here now, face to face with the school’s most insufferable bastard, who he’s expected to work with for the rest of the year, has Craig thinking that maybe he needs a repeat of that night as soon as possible. 

It would be a gross understatement to say that he likes film. Sometimes he goes as far as to think that he lives it, breathes it, that cinema is his lifeblood. 

Craig likes to think of his life in cinematic terms; all the world’s a stage and everyone around him has a part to play. If he had his way, Kenny and his stupid friends would be reduced to nothing more than background characters, extras to fill the set that is their high school.

Unfortunately for him, real life is so rarely like the movies.

In spite of his reservations about McCormick, Craig also knows that he earned the title fair and square. Craig will reluctantly admit that the lighting work he does for their school productions are nothing less than stellar, and the one short film he’d made about his friends was actually pretty heartwarming. 

Well, as heartwarming as Craig’s cold, dead heart will allow him to feel, anyway. Clyde had cried, so maybe that means something, but probably not.

Craig will acknowledge that Kenny does possess some semblance of talent, but it doesn’t mean he’s happy about getting stuck with him. So when Mr. Mackey makes some excuse to leave the two of them alone, Craig just matches Kenny’s stupid smile with one of his usual glares. 

“I see you’re going to be super fun to work with,” Kenny notes dryly, one corner of his lips still quirked upwards. 

“It’s not my job to be fun,” Craig retorts, the expression on his features giving nothing away. 

“What _is_ your job, anyway?” Kenny asks, peering at him carefully. “Because I gotta tell you, dude, I have no fucking idea what Mr. Mackey thinks you need a vice president for.”

That one almost startles a laugh out of Craig, mostly because the observation is totally fucking true. The club has got, like, five members, Craig and Kenny included. They’re usually able to round up a few more when the drama club puts on a show, but other than that, Craig has no clue. 

But since Craig would rather eat dirt than concede that Kenny is not only right, but kind of funny, he just shrugs and shoves his hands into his jacket pockets. 

“Whatever,” he grumbles. “Stay out of my way, McCormick,” he says, shouldering him as he walks out into the hall.

“I’ll see you around, Tucker!” Kenny calls out after him, and Craig thinks that maybe his voice sounds a little wistful, but that’s probably just his imagination talking. 

Later on at lunch, Craig complains as much to his best friend. Clyde, in between bites of at least three different burgers because for some unknown reason he’s the star player of their school’s football team and needs the protein, just shakes his head at him fondly.

“You’re such a drama queen, man,” Clyde informs him cheerfully, clapping Craig on the shoulder. “I really doubt it’s going to be that bad.”

—

It’s that bad. 

Craig will be the first to admit that he isn’t the most easily agitated person alive, mostly because he can hardly get himself to give a shit about anything in the first place. But when it comes to his art, he’s insanely critical and a borderline perfectionist. 

It gives him this raw feeling of satisfaction, cutting clips together to form something meaningful, even if the finished product is some dumb thing like a compilation of their school’s sports teams, as commissioned by Wendy.

The thing is, Craig’s self-aware enough to know that he has the tendency to be a douche, especially when he’s working on something. When he was a kid, his anger would manifest itself through punches and physical sparring. Nowadays, he’s traded fists for cutting remarks and sarcastic jabs, self-righteousness radiating off him in waves. 

That aside, he never expected McCormick to be the same. The guy is pretty easygoing for the most part, the kind of person who gets along with just about anyone. But Kenny’s got an indignant fire inside him, too, and with the two of them forced into each other’s company for extended periods of time, it becomes pretty inevitable for an argument to break out.

Token had once made the observation that the two of them were like Kyle and Cartman, but with an added dose of sexual tension. Craig had swiftly responded by punching him on the shoulder, and then locked himself in a bathroom stall for the rest of the lunch period, trying to steady his breathing and attempting to ignore the surprising accuracy of Token’s statement.

It’s nearing six on a Thursday afternoon, and Craig is still holed up in the AV Room, looking through the half-completed video montage he’s supposed to have finished on the South Park High Cows for their upcoming game. 

“How many fucking times do I have to ask you for the footage of last year’s homecoming game?” Craig demands snidely, not looking away from the computer screen in front of him. “I trust you’ve got enough brain cells to do that, right?” 

“Jesus fucking Christ, Tucker,” Kenny replies hotly, pushing aside the mess of CDs and tapes in front of him. “Maybe if you actually took the time to organize this shit, I wouldn’t be wasting any of your precious time.” 

“Fine,” Craig says, pushing himself off the desk chair and getting to his feet, stalking over to where Kenny’s standing on the other side of the room. “Let’s fucking switch, then. Good luck trying to splice all that together with missing footage.” 

“Hey, man,” Kenny answers back, spinning around so that they’re facing each other. “It’s not my fucking fault that we’re behind on this, so don’t take this shit out on me.” 

“Well, maybe we would be on time if you actually took this seriously,” Craig retorts, and even then he knows it’s a low blow. Kenny’s basically as passionate about this as he is, sometimes he forgets that. 

“God,” Kenny growls, his gaze flared as he takes a step closer. He’s barely taller than Craig, but the outright anger twisting his features is enough to have Craig backing into a wall. “Just because I don’t have your fucking _standards_ ,” he starts, punctuating each word with a fierce push at Craig’s chest, “doesn’t mean I don’t care. I take this shit as seriously as you and you know it.” 

“Don’t touch me,” Craig seethes, his hand snapping up to tear Kenny’s off him, but even then it’s not in the tone he intended. He’s almost completely pressed into the wall, Kenny leaning over him and trapping him in place, and Craig thinks he sees something shift in Kenny’s expression, his eyes flashing. 

“You’re such an asshole,” Kenny breathes, voice barely above a whisper, and Craig hardly has time to open his mouth to retort before Kenny surges forward and closes the gap between them, their lips meeting each other in a frenzy of electricity and fire. 

They don’t bother with pleasantries, Craig’s mouth immediately opening up so that Kenny can slip his tongue between his lips, sucking hard on the bottom one. Craig’s fisting a hand in Kenny’s blonde hair, tugging and pulling, while Kenny’s grip tightens around the back of Craig’s head, pulling him off the wall and pressing their bodies together. 

Kenny breaks away from Craig’s mouth and sucks hard at the base of his jaw, leaving a trail of kisses along his neck, and Craig makes an involuntary sound that might have been a moan. He shifts slightly so that their groins are straining against each other, his own erection leveled with Kenny’s. 

He somehow maneuvers them over to the computer desk so that he’s leaning against it, Kenny’s hips now grinding insistently against his own, the friction of their denim jeans causing heat to pool in his lower abdomen. When Kenny finally reaches down and starts to struggle with the zipper on Craig’s pants, it only hits him then that they’re actually going to fucking do this.

“This doesn’t change anything,” Craig tells him, moving his head backwards so he can take in Kenny’s flushed cheeks and wide pupils, his hair in complete disarray. “I still fucking hate you,” he adds, but he’s not sure he really believes it. 

“As long as we’re clear on that,” Kenny replies, pulling Craig into another searing kiss, the grating noise of his zipper opening accompanying this motion. 

Craig bites his lip as Kenny starts to jerk him off, his hand rough and his breathing ragged, panting in Craig’s ear as Craig fumbles for Kenny’s jeans, popping the button and freeing his cock from where it’s strained against his boxers, wrapping his own hand around it in time with Kenny’s movements. 

Kenny presses their mouths together again, and it’s a clash of tongues, teeth, and muffled moans. Craig feels his orgasm building inside him like a tidal wave, and then he’s coming into Kenny’s grip, speeding up his own pace as Kenny explodes, his strokes long and slow to guide him through it. 

They’re sweating in their clothes, palms slick with come. Craig steps aside and breathes deeply, still trying to come back down from the high he’d just experienced. He supposes Token was right all along, but for some strange reason, he’s more disconcerted about the idea of having sexual tension with Kenny McCormick rather than the fact that he just had pretty spectacular sex with Kenny McCormick. 

“Shit, guess Stan was right,” Kenny drawls lazily, breaking the silence. He’s managed to fix himself up, the slight blush on his face as the only indication of their previous activities. 

“Right about what?” Craig returns, and a wave of exhaustion rolls over him. It’s been over a year since he broke up with Tweek, and the lack of sexual action on his part is taking a toll on him. 

“He said we needed to fuck out our tension,” Kenny explains, and Craig wants to laugh but doesn’t. He never thought he’d live to see the day he actually agreed with Stan Marsh on something, but here they are. 

“Marsh is smarter than I thought,” Craig says, and he must really be out of it for those words to be coming out of his mouth. 

Kenny laughs, then bends down to whisper in Craig’s ear. “I think this year just got a whole lot more interesting.” 

Craig shivers slightly, but doesn’t avert his gaze. “Still hate you, McCormick,” he repeats, then he reaches forward and curls his fingers into the collar of Kenny’s T-shirt, dragging their lips together again.

—

It becomes, not exactly a thing, but something close to it. It’s not like they’ve got a set schedule for fucking or anything like that, but Kenny comes to be something Craig can rely on, whether it’s his mouth or his hands. They move on from secret meetings in the AV Room to tumbles in Craig’s bed, the side of his face mashed into the blanket to keep the rest of his family from hearing. 

They still fight all the time, but there’s something different about their disagreements now, an undercurrent to them that Craig’s been trying to pinpoint. Sometimes he’ll find Kenny watching him with an unfathomable gleam in his eyes, like he can see all the way into Craig’s soul.

Craig’s been sitting in the same position for over an hour, his back cramping as he continues to peruse the video clips onscreen, trying to figure out a way to make Mr. Mackey’s anti-drug campaigns a little less depressing. 

“Dude, you need to take a break,” Kenny comments off-handedly from where he’s seated with his legs crossed on the desk. He’s wearing a Radiohead T-shirt that Craig grudgingly admires, and he absently wonders when he started observing things about Kenny in the first place. 

“Can’t,” Craig intones, not lifting his gaze from the computer terminal. He clicks on something and moves a segment of a bunch of hippies to the start of the video. “Need this done by Friday’s assembly.” 

Kenny doesn’t respond, and Craig lets himself become immersed in his work, his mind shutting out everything that doesn’t have anything to do with the assigned task. He can feel a groove settling, his brain working out where he wants this to go, when there’s a burst of noise and music jolts him back into reality. 

“What the fuck, McCormick?” Craig demands, turning his head around with difficulty and surveying Kenny in annoyance. 

For his own part, Kenny is standing triumphantly in front of the huge speakers, shaking his upper body in time with the song’s melody.

“Come on, Tucker,” Kenny implores, grinning widely. He’s still doing some kind of weird dance move, and he looks so ridiculous that Craig can feel his mouth curling into a smile despite himself. “Sing with me. Roxanne!” he yells, drawing the name out. “You don’t have to put on the red light.” 

Craig shakes his head and stays rooted to the spot, but his posture isn’t so rigid anymore, and he watches Kenny with growing amusement. Kenny’s dramatically strolling around the room, his comical movements not enough to disguise the reality that he can fucking sing. 

“Put on the red light!” Kenny chants, and then he’s reaching forward and grabbing Craig, pulling him closer and twirling his unwilling form around. “Tucker, I know you know this song,” he warns Craig, waving his arms about like a puppet master. 

“Okay, okay,” Craig concedes, and he’s actually laughing, all traces of stress gone from his body. The two of them continue to shout, “Put on the red light!” at the top of their lungs, until Kenny’s foot gets caught in a wire and he’s falling to the ground, Craig crashing down on top of him. 

They’re lying on top of each other, blue eyes meeting gray ones as the song continues on in the background. Craig’s close enough to count the freckles scattered across Kenny’s cheeks, the same ones he’s been staring at for so many weeks. 

“I loved you since I knew you,” Kenny sings softly, and Craig swallows tightly. Kenny’s eyeing him earnestly, something soft in his glance that tells Craig he might not actually just be singing anymore, and Craig can’t deal with this right now, doesn’t even want to process the implications. 

“We should get back to work,” Craig says in reply, his tone a little reluctant. He watches disappointment come over Kenny’s expression, but it’s gone before he can really take it in, and in its place is a cheeky smile, a knowing glint in his eye. 

“Or,” Kenny begins, rolling over so that he’s bracketing Craig to the linoleum, “I can suck you off instead.” 

Despite himself, Craig’s dick twitches at the thought of Kenny’s lips, warm wetness enveloping him whole. “Yeah, you can do that,” he manages to agree, and the next hour is spent decidedly not talking.

—

The only downside that comes with fucking Kenny on a regular basis is the uncomfortable realization that he actually cares about Kenny enough to _notice_ things about him. They’re not even ordinary things, either. They’re things like the way he sticks his tongue out when he’s working really hard on something, or how sweet he is when he’s asleep, curled in on himself like he isn’t over six feet tall. 

It’s lunchtime and Craig is currently seated at the back of the cafeteria, his fingers curled into a fist while he sends glares towards where Kenny is sitting on the other end of the room. 

He has no idea why all the girls in school are making such a big deal over the fact that Kenny just got a haircut. Yeah, his hair was long enough to hang over his eyes, and now that it’s shorter, everyone can see their exact shade of blue, but big fucking deal.

He’s startled out of his thoughts by someone taking a seat in front of him, and when he comes to himself, he finds Tweek grinning up at him from underneath Kyle’s arm. 

“What’s wrong, man?” he asks, eyeing Craig speculatively.

Tweek has been dating Kyle for over half a year, and Craig thinks he would have given himself a moment to mourn the death of his ex-boyfriend’s taste if he wasn’t too busy fighting his own growing attraction for Broflovski’s good pal, Kenny fucking McCormick. 

“Does this have something to do with Kenny?” Broflovski adds, and for someone so smart, he sure asks some pretty stupid questions. 

“No,” Craig grumbles sourly, his frown deepening when another group of giggling sophomores walk past Kenny’s table, shooting him suggestive stares. “Mind your own business, Broflovski,” he snaps.

“Craig,” Tweek says reprovingly, and Craig resists the urge to roll his eyes in frustration.

“Sorry,” he amends, clearing his throat. “Mind your own business, _Kyle_ ,” he repeats, exaggeratedly pronouncing his name. Tweek scoffs, but beggars can’t be choosers when it comes to Craig Tucker.

But Kyle just sighs patiently, like Craig is another one of his stupid friends. “Look, about Kenny—”

“Okay, no,” Craig cuts him off, raising his palms in the air. “We’re not talking about this.” 

“Dude, if you’d just listen to him,” Tweek tries to interject, but Craig swivels towards him and lifts an annoyed brow. 

“Just because he’s fucking you,” Craig says, pointing at Kyle, “does not make him an authority on me.” 

“It’s the other way around, you fuck,” Kyle grits out, his jaw clenched. The tips of Tweek’s ears color red, and, Jesus Christ, Craig did not need to know that. 

“I’m out of here,” he declares, getting to his feet and taking his half-eaten tray of food with him, leaving the two lovebirds alone where they can be disgusting without offending anyone. As he goes, he passes by Kenny’s spot, subtly sending him a sideways glance as he does, hoping he takes the hint. 

Kenny finds him standing alone in the middle of the AV Room five minutes later, and Craig doesn’t reflect too much on the way he marks Kenny’s neck more so than usual.

—

Craig flushes the used condom down the toilet then splashes water on his face, trying to calm his still-racing heart. In the dim lighting of his bathroom, his skin is tinged with green, the weak brightness not enough to hide how much his eyes are shining. 

When he returns to his room, Kenny is sprawled out on the bed, still naked and half-concealed by the blanket he’d kicked to the floor earlier. When he notices Craig watching from the doorway, he strikes some kind of weird pose, propping his head on his hand and pouting his lips, and Craig snorts then rolls his eyes. 

“Do you want me to draw you like one of my French girls?” Craig deadpans, moving towards the bed and falling down next to Kenny, their bodies lying stretched out on his sheets. 

“Photograph me like one of your French boys, maybe,” Kenny clarifies, and with the late afternoon sun streaming in through the closed blinds, shades of yellow and gold washing over Kenny’s lean form, Craig thinks he could make the most beautiful film about him.

Craig crawls to the end of his bed and retrieves his laptop from his desk, sifting through the endless movies he has saved in a folder on his desktop. When they first started sleeping together, Craig would kick Kenny out as soon as they were finished, never allowing him to overstay his welcome. Recently, though, Craig’s been allowing him to stay on for longer each time. 

They watch _12 Angry Men_ , one of their collective favorites, the space between Craig’s four walls darkening as the sun slowly sinks into the horizon, and Craig can feel every inch of distance between them. 

“Oh, man, the drama club should totally do this for their next play,” Kenny says eagerly, his gaze following the characters shouting at each other onscreen. “Cartman would be the perfect Juror Three.”

“Maybe because he wouldn’t be acting,” Craig replies with a scoff, and Kenny turns to him with a grin. “Okay, Butters would definitely be Juror Two, that little bitch.” 

“I don’t know,” Kenny mumbles thoughtfully, his mind obviously somewhere else. “He gives a pretty mean blowjob.” 

Craig feels his jaw drop open, and he surveys Kenny in complete shock. “ _Butters?_ ” he echoes, his pupils widening. “Seriously?” 

“This was obviously before he started fucking Cartman,” Kenny continues, seemingly pleased about Craig’s obvious surprise. “I wouldn’t touch him now, there’s no telling what kind of diseases he might have on him,” he declares, and Craig smiles. 

The two of them debate a little more about possible candidates from their high school, and then they watch the rest of the movie in silence. Craig gets lost in the events onscreen, feeling the slight twinge of envy that he does every time he sees this film, wondering when he’ll ever be good enough to come up with stories like this, stories that’ll change the world. 

“You know,” Kenny begins conversationally, cutting into the silence and talking over the final scene of the movie, “I always wondered if a guy like you could ever be as great as you look.”

Craig feels his breath catch in his throat, his ears ringing in the wake of this unfounded observation. “Yeah?”

Kenny stares right at him and his gaze softens, his mouth curving into a warm, genuine smile. “Turns out you are.”

His words hit him like a wave washing upon the sand, the layers upon layers of hidden meaning crashing over him and pulling him in way over his head. He doesn’t know what to say to that, doesn’t even know how he could possibly respond to that, so he lets his lips do a different kind of talking, tilting forward and catching Kenny’s mouth with his own. 

Craig’s laptop ends up on the floor as the final credits roll, but he can’t find it in himself to care much.

—

The drama club chooses to do _Wicked_ for their annual show, which has Craig working overtime trying to round up interested parties to do lights and sound. He’s pretty glad about having Kenny on board this year, and the two of them spend a lot of time in the booth above the stand, fiddling around with the switches and trying to keep the aura of magic and wonder as present as possible. 

They’re sitting on a raft hanging over the stage, having given control of the set over to Kevin for the time being. Below them, Nichole is singing “Defying Gravity”, the sweetness and soul of her voice carrying itself upwards and filling the whole auditorium with sound. To his right, Kenny is enraptured by the proceedings below him, singing along softly in time with the people onstage. 

“Why are you doing this?” Craig asks him, and when Kenny looks over at him in confusion, Craig gestures down at the scene underneath them. “You should be down there with everyone. You’re pretty fucking talented, dude.” 

Kenny uncrosses his legs and swings them over, kicking his feet back and forth into the open air. Tweek’s taken his spot in the middle of the stage as Fiyero, and Craig notices Kyle watching him adoringly from the wings. Fucking gross. 

“When I was younger,” Kenny starts suddenly, pointedly not meeting Craig’s gaze, “my parents pretty much sucked. I mean, in some ways they still do, but they’ve gotten a lot better,” he goes on, and Craig feels his gut clench with unexplainable emotion. 

“Kevin was gone almost all the time, so it was up to me to take care of Karen,” Kenny explains. “She would freak out about all the screaming, because, I mean, what kid wouldn’t, right? So we’d watch movies together, the sound turned up really high to block out all the noise. We only had, like, three films, but we’d watch them over and over until we practically had them memorized. That’s when I decided I wanted to do that for real, help make movies because sometimes a good story is all you need to escape reality,” Kenny finishes, smiling a little self-consciously. “Pretty fucking gay, I know.” 

“No,” Craig protests, barely able to force the words out around the tightness in his throat. “No, that’s—you’re…something else, McCormick,” he says eventually, and it’s the most accurate description Craig’s ever given someone. 

Kenny is the guy who managed to worm his way into Craig’s life without him even knowing it, and in the grand script that Craig had planned out for himself, Kenny crashed onto it like a meteor, causing everything else to veer wildly off-course.

Down below, Tweek sings, “Somehow I’ve fallen under your spell…” and Craig never wanted to be the guy who related to musical numbers, but here he is, sitting twenty feet above the ground and feeling all the while like he’s falling, anyway. 

Kenny shifts a little, moving over so that they’re sitting closer together, and when his shoulder brushes against Craig’s, it’s only then that Craig finally realizes what the strange thrumming in his veins is, the meaning behind the electricity charging through his blood, the current underlying their interactions. 

Sparks. That’s what it is.

—

Craig will admit it, he freaks out just a little. 

Okay, fine, he freaks out a lot. Not that there’s any physical evidence of his internal turmoil on his face, because Craig will at most nod his head in acknowledgment on a good day, but, yeah, he totally panics. 

He tries to tell himself that it’s not completely his fault. He and Tweek had gotten together before they even developed feelings for each other, so when it finally happened, all he needed to do was take Tweek’s hand and tell him, “This is for real.” Craig has no idea what to do about his newfound attraction towards the guy he swore he’d hate forever ever since he was swindled out of his birthday money seven years ago.

There’s also the added fact that Craig has no idea whether or not Kenny has any deeper feelings for him that go beyond the sexual kind. Sometimes he thinks he could, but then again, Craig is shit at dealing with emotion. He’d manage to genuinely convince himself that someone is fine when they aren’t just because he wouldn’t know how to deal with it. He’s that much of a dick.

He’s slightly glad that the last night of the show falls towards the end of the semester, because that means there aren’t that many things he’s in charge of anymore. He spends the next week and half expressly ignoring Kenny, smoking on the roof during lunch so he doesn’t have to deal with the outright fury in Kyle’s eyes, Tweek’s disappointed expression, and Clyde and Token’s obvious confusion. 

Craig will be the first to acknowledge that this manner of dealing with things is as immature as he pokes fun at people for being, but he can’t help it. This whole thing is a lot stronger than he is, almost overpowering in its intensity, and he just doesn’t know what to do. 

He’s aware his friends are cracking down on where he spends his breaks hiding out, so he’s not that surprised when he swings the door to the roof open and finds Kyle Broflovski standing there waiting for him, arms crossed and features twisted into something so hostile, by all rights he should be breathing fire. 

“You’re a piece of shit, Tucker,” Kyle says immediately, stomping over to him. Craig doesn’t even flinch when Kyle throws a hard punch at his shoulder. He knows he deserves it. 

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Craig counters, and it’s the utter defeat in his tone that makes Kyle take a step back and survey him, his eyebrows disappearing under the curls on his forehead. 

“You’re really fucking stupid, you know that, right?” Kyle levels another glare at him, and Craig sends a silent prayer Tweek’s way because he hopes the two of them never get into an argument. Tweek would be buried alive beneath all of Kyle’s self-righteous anger. 

“Seriously,” Kyle goes on, getting into his rant, “the two of you spend the whole semester sleeping together, and you run when shit gets a little too real. How the fuck were you ever in a relationship to begin with?” 

“Leave Tweek out of this,” Craig grits out, his shoulders hunching. There’s nothing Kyle can toss at him that he doesn’t already know. For all that he makes fun of Kyle, Craig knows that he’s good enough for Tweek in a way Craig never was.

“We told Kenny this would happen,” Kyle continues, not paying attention to him. “God knows why he’s been in love with you for years when you’re nothing but a big fucking—”

Craig blinks as Kyle’s argument settles in, sending him reeling. “What did you say?” he asks, cutting Kyle off, hardly daring to believe what he just heard. 

Kyle pauses, one hand in the air and his eyebrows bunched together in angry slants. “Kenny’s in love with you,” he states factually, his mouth curled into an unhappy grimace. “He’s liked you for years and you finally start paying attention to him only to fuck everything up.”

“I—” Craig is completely unprepared for the burst of sheer happiness that instantly floods through his body, buoying him up until he feels like he could drift away into the winter afternoon. He hasn’t felt like this since the last time Tweek had directed a secret smile at him from across a crowded room, and truth be told, Craig silently wondered if he’d ever feel like that again. 

Then reality slams into him, hard and fast, and he’s left cold and empty as the realization of how monumentally he’s messed up sinks in. 

“Fuck,” Craig says, falling back against the wall and pressing the heel of his palm to his forehead. “I need a fucking cigarette.”

Kyle wanders over and stands next to him as he inhales, and he waves aside Craig’s offer of a smoke. “You need to make it up to him,” he tells Craig, tugging at the ends of his hat. “You like movies, don’t you? Make it big and dramatic, you owe him that much,” he tacks on, and it’s a testament to how truly horrible Craig feels that he only nods mutely in response. 

“You don’t hate me, do you?” Kyle asks suddenly, and Craig swivels towards him, his brow cocked in question. “Because of Tweek, I mean,” Kyle clarifies, drumming his fingers on the surface of the wall. “You’re pretty hard to read, Tucker.” 

Craig snorts and takes another drag before shaking his head. “Nah,” he replies, blowing out a puff of smoke. “And call me Craig,” he adds, waving a dismissive hand at Kyle. “You’re way too uncool to use last names, Broflovski.” 

That gets a weak chuckle out of Kyle, who leans over and plucks the cigarette from Craig’s fingers, blowing it out in the other direction. 

“I guess you’re not so bad, Craig,” he confesses, a small smile forming. There’s a short pause, and then he straightens up. “Hey, maybe after everything the four of us could double date?” he suggests brightly, and Craig groans.

—

When Kenny opens the door, Craig knows he probably deserves the way his gaze narrows slightly, the look on his face cold and dark. 

Craig’s standing in the doorway of Kenny’s house, holding a sprinkler over his head and dousing his entire body in water, the pseudo-rain paired with the night sky overhead turning everything cinematic and over-the-top, the way Kyle told him to make it. Frank Sinatra is playing from a boombox hidden behind some bushes, and Craig is wearing a tuxedo of all things.

“I fucked up,” he declares by way of greeting. The water pouring down on him is soaking into his skin, plastering his shirt to his torso. “I freaked out.” 

“You could have just let me down easy,” Kenny points out, his posture tense and rigid. His lips are forced downwards into an uncharacteristic frown, and Craig wants so badly to step forward and wipe that sadness from him. 

“No, it’s—I’m shit with emotion, okay?” Craig explains, blinking water out of his eyes when he moves forward and accidentally spills some on the interior of Kenny’s home. “It’s not you, it’s me,” he adds, and when Kenny’s features go blank, Craig quickly jumps in. “Ugh, no, see that? You just weren’t part of the plan. My whole grand scheme for the rest of high school, you made me go off-script.” 

“So what are you doing here?” Kenny asks harshly, the lines on his forehead deepening. 

“I love you,” Craig blurts out, and it’s only the second time in his life he’s ever used those three words, but if it was anyone else, it wouldn’t be the truth. “Not to be creepy about it, but I think I have for a while now.” 

Kenny drops his gaze and stares at the ground, and Craig watches as the corners of his mouth curve upwards slowly, spreading into a wide, bright smile. 

“You’re such a loser,” he breathes, and then he’s moving forward and tilting Craig’s head up with two of his fingers, kissing him slow and deep while water continues to rain down on them. It’s the perfect movie ending.

Craig was never the kind of guy who believed in happily-ever-afters. But he thinks he gets one, anyway.


End file.
